Toshiba Portege A605 Review

Pros

Light weight and runs cool

Good battery life

Very small power adapter

Cons

Slow battery charging rate

Flexible chassis

by Kevin O’Brien

The Toshiba Portege A605 is a 12.1″ ultra-portable notebook designed for business travelers who want something small and lightweight, but don’t want to make any compromises when it comes to features. The A600 series notebooks offer an on-board optical drive so users can enjoy movies or install applications on the road, eSATA to expand storage, and a power saving Intel Centrino 2 platform to squeeze out as much battery life as possible. In this review we find out how well the A605 stands up to the rigors of day-to-day use, and if it is worth purchasing this notebook over a netbook or other ultra-portable notebooks.

Build and DesignThe Portege looks very classy for a business notebook, with glossy piano black keyboard bezel and screen cover along with a matte silver base. The port and button layout appears to be very well thought out with effort put into things as simple as the power and activity indicators. The silver keyboard contrasts the black finish, with a nice matte finish with black lettering that is easy to read.

Build quality is hit or miss depending on what part of the notebook you are looking at. The quality of the finish is excellent, with a thick layer of glossy black paint that appears to be scratch resistant. On the flip side, the plastic used to construct the notebook suffers from abnormal amounts of flex–a side effect of its lightweight construction. The palm rest and lower half of the case flex inward when you grip the notebook to carry it around, and even resting your palms on the palm rest makes them bend in slightly. The screen cover shows similar flex and when gripped firmly makes the display show signs of color distortion around the edges and center. The screen itself also has some issues in how it is mounted, showing a pressure spot in the bottom corner that “flashes” when the screen jiggles on your lap or desk surface.

Upgrading the components on the A605 is more difficult that the average notebook, with half of the RAM soldered to the motherboard and no access panel for the hard drive. While most business users probably won’t be modifying company issued hardware, regular users who buy this notebook might be upset.

DisplayThe 12.1″ display is average compared to other business ultra-portable notebooks, but below average if you compare it to the screens on larger notebooks. Colors are bright and vibrant thanks to some help from the LED-backlighting. Overall brightness is adequate for viewing in an office setting but not bright enough for using the notebook outside under direct sunlight. The screen is evenly lit across the entire surface, with the only hotspot showing near the screen hinge attachment points … which pinch the screen slightly. Vertical viewing angles are average, with colors quickly washing out or distorting outside of the viewing sweet spot. Horizontal viewing angles are much better, staying accurate at steep angles, only dimming as it rotates further away from you.

Keyboard and TouchpadThe A605 features a nearly full-size keyboard with the primary keys being the same size as on a larger notebook, but the surrounding keys are condensed to fit inside the frame of the Portege. The keyboard is comfortable to type on, but suffers from the same flex issue as the palm rest and notebook bottom. Under moderate pressure the entire keyboard surface will sink in, giving you a trampoline feeling as you type. Individual key action is smooth, giving off a very mild click noise when pressed.

Toshiba includes an ALPS touchpad on the A605, which is quite large for a 12” notebook. It is quick and responsive, with very little lag noticed during our tests. Fingertip sensitivity is much better than older ALPS touchpads we have seen, is slightly under a Synaptics model. The touchpad surface has a rough matte finish, which is easily to slide across even if your finger is slightly moist from sweat. The touchpad buttons were disappointing, being very small and having shallow feedback when pressed. The buttons are mounted flush with the chrome trim under the touchpad and are so tightly fit that they rub against the edges when pressed.

Ports and FeaturesPort selection on the A605 is good for an ultra-portable notebook, including three USB ports, VGA, LAN, audio jacks, and eSATA through a combo port. While HDMI or DisplayPort might be handy, many business users still use VGA for projectors and it is more than capable for connecting the notebook to a secondary monitor. The bottom of the notebook also features a docking connector, for further port expansion.

Front view

Rear view

Left view

Right view

PerformanceSystem performance of the Toshiba Portege A605 falls somewhere between a full-size notebook and a netbook. The ultra-low voltage SU9400 processor sacrifices speed at the cost of performance to gain battery life. For normal system activities such as typing documents, working on spreadsheets, surfing the Web, or even watching SD video the system shows no signs of lagging. Light gaming or HD movies will stress the system, pegging the processor and drastically increasing power consumption. HD movies were very playable, with most 720P and 1080P content putting the processor under a 45-60% load depending on the amount of motion on screen. Games are limited to older things such as the original Half-Life.

SpeakerThe Portege A605 is equipped with a single mono speaker that was surprisingly loud … even when compared to other low-end notebooks with stereo speakers. It lacks bass and midrange, but considering how bad it could have been, it surprised us in the office during our music test. For listening to music, viewing YouTube clips, or watching a movie it would probably work fine, but as always, headphones are one of the best accessories for notebook users.

BatteryToshiba includes an ultra-low voltage Intel Core 2 Duo processor inside the A605 Portege, which we thought would help in the battery life department. Under normal operating conditions the notebook floats around 9 to 11 watts of power consumption, which sounds low, but not as low as some larger notebooks. The Lenovo ThinkPad T400 for example consumes only 8.5 watts of power when under light processor loads, and that specific configuration had the high performance T9600 processor. In our battery test with the screen at 70% backlight, wireless active, and Vista set to the “Balanced” profile, the A605 stayed on for 5 hours and 27 minutes. While this is still a respectable figure, we think it could have reach a much greater time with better power management.

One stand-out feature of the A605 is the super small 45W power adapter. It is great for traveling, since it doesn’t add that much weight to your bag, and if you get a different power cord for it, takes up very little space. The downside to such a small power adapter though is the very slow charge rate on the notebook, taking hours to complete a charge if the notebook is on.

Heat and NoiseOverall the Portege A605 doesn’t get that hot under normal use, and only develops hot spots under prolonged benchmarks. The Intel Core 2 Dup SU9400 helps keep processor heat output to a minimum, with a 10 watt maximum consumption rate. Under normal use the palm rests stay relatively cool, about 4 to 10 degrees above our room temperature of 74 degrees Fahrenheit. The one hotspot we found is located at the top left of the keyboard, near the power jack. Fan noise is minimal, with the fan actually being off under most of the time. When the fan is on the only time you notice it is running is when you feel hot air blowing on your arm from the vent on the side.

ConclusionThe Toshiba Portege A605 offers good looks and a small form factor, but compromises build quality to achieve its very low weight. The palm rest, keyboard, and screen all exhibit a good amount of flex, which doesn’t bode well for thoughts of durability. Looking past the flexible chassis, the notebook does offer a built-in optical drive, and still keeps the overall weight to just above 3lbs. For a business traveler who only cares about that, this notebook falls right in the weight range of most netbooks. With the current list price of $1,399 it is priced against the Lenovo ThinkPad X200 or about double the price of an HP Pavilion dv2. Overall I think the Portege A605 offers a lot potential for a customer interested in a good looking business notebook, but it has a few areas that could see some improvement.

Pros:

Weighs in at 3lbs, even with built-in optical drive

Good battery life

Cool operation

Very small power adapter

Cons:

Slow charging rate while the notebook is powered on and charging at the same time